Endstation Chaos!

FUN WITH TRANSLATIONS: So, last year Avery Cates #4 came out, The Terminal State, which, frankly, is my favorite title of the series. Aside from the stream of physics-related pages I get in my Google Alerts emails, I just like the title.

The series is translated into German. I’ve had some email exchanges with the German translator and its been fun. I like their covers, too. Here’s the cover for the German version of The Terminal State:

POW! Endstation Chaos, indeed! That’s bananas. I can’t decide which title is better. Although I wonder why they suddenly went with English on this one; the previous 3 all had German titles. Although we have to consider the possibility that “Endstation Chaos” is just so cool a title, it had to be.

8 Comments

DonMarch 1, 2011 at 7:35 pm

ALERT BEGIN PEDANT TRANSMISSION ALERT

“Endstation Chaos” is perfectly good German, actually, and owes absolutely nothing to English.

If “Chaos” in German is almost identical to “chaos” in English (the only difference being the capitalisation of the German noun), this is because both languages take the word from Greek. And as for “Endstation”, this is the usual name for the terminus of any rail, tram or underground line in Germany. The “Station” part of course comes from Latin, so English and German have both borrowed it. And the “End” part is natively common to both, as it is a Germanic word.

Thus while the title does mean what it seems to mean (“Last stop: chaos”, or maybe “Final destination: chaos”), there’s nothing English about it other than the fact that German and English are related languages.

END PEDANT TRANSMISSION

I feel uncomfortable just leaving a snooty know-it-all comment, as I am in fact a massive fan of the series and actively infect others with it. So let me end by saying that yes, this is probably the best book yet, and I’m very much looking forward to the next one!

jsomers(Post author)March 1, 2011 at 7:45 pm

Don: Thanks for the clarification (sincerely!). Good to know they’re not just getting lazy. Thanks also for the compliment!

jsomers(Post author)March 1, 2011 at 7:49 pm

Don: Also too, I wonder why this one isn’t a near-literal translation like the others, then? MYSTERIES UPON MYSTERIES.

Jeff, I don’t know why they deviated from the original this time. Instead of translating the title directly it seems they did some free association thinking here: terminal state – terminal station – final stop – nah this going nowhere this is chaos… wait, that’s it! Destination Chaos!